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Schoolchildren visit Stacy Farm

MICHAEL KELLY The Marietta Times Shanley Malone of St. Marys, W.Va., watches as her son, Heath, 4, exclaims over a strawberry he picked at the Stacy Family Farm near Reno Wednesday morning.

On the Stacy Family Farm, you can smell the strawberries before you see the bright red fruit.

The farm was busy as a train station Wednesday morning, with busloads of school children touring the facility and people walking through the seven acres of prime ripe strawberries filling buckets and other containers.

Bill Stacy said the farm is an educational experience in addition to being a working agriculture enterprise. A barn includes picnic tables set up for school students to do crafts, and the building includes a “weather room” and an enclosed beehive. About 2,500 students a year tour the farm, he said, including local children and those from other areas of the state.

Stacy said the farm east of Reno was acquired by the family in 2012 when it was put up for disposal by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources as a disused tree farm. He started out with one acre of strawberries – “something to keep our kids busy,” he said – and now has seven acres planted. This week, he said, was prime time for picking the fruit.

The family had a longtime strawberry farm in Oak Grove before moving to the Reno location.

Shanley Malone of St. Marys, W. Va., was browsing a row with her children, Heath, 5, and Ella, 4. She said the family came to the farm last year as well.

“The berries are really good, very juicy,” she said.

“We put them in tasty ice cream,” Ella said.

Up by the barn, a kindergarten class from St. Mary Catholic School was lining up after seeing the bee hive.

“The bees live in a hive, and sometimes they live in a little box,” said Jackson Biehl.

Siyudi Lopez learned something about bees, too.

“You know what the man bees do? Nothing,” she giggled. “They just eat and eat and eat and eat.”

Strawberries will be available for picking for another three weeks, Stacy said. After that will be blueberries and blackberries, and in the fall pumpkins and a corn maze.

At a glance

Stacy Family Farm

¯ Founded: 1899, Oak Grove.

¯ Original size: 24 acres.

¯ Reno location: Established in 2012 from a state tree farm acreage.

¯Number of students who come in for field trips: About 2,500 a year.

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